Why won’t the Press Herald run this comment?

         

Yesterday, an article ran in both the Portland Press Herald and the Coastal Journal asserting that a ‘conflict’ has emerged in the controversy over MLF location at Brunswick West.

We posted the following comment not once, but twice:

As long as the reporter is interested in digging into possible conflicts, why hasn't he looked at the conflict arising from NNEPRA purchase of the subject property BEFORE their paid consulting engineer was tasked to evaluate the location alternatives? Surprise, surprise...the paid engineer said the site they had already bought was the best choice.

And why doesn't he look into how and why Brunswick Taxi, owned by the family of the former town council chair (in office when the site was selected and purchased), has a lucrative contract to transport Amtrak crews back and forth to Portland twice a day, 7/365.

As to Wallace and his development plans, he filed his first papers with the town Planning Department in 2005, well before anyone had plans to bring the Downeaster to Brunswick and build an MLF in town, let alone at Brunswick West.
If you're going to report on conflicts, why not be all inclusive?

Apparently the editors find no ‘conflict’ in publishing such articles but removing reader comments that don’t say yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.  Perhaps they find our comment ‘profane,’ at least in the figurative sense.

You’ll even find it shown twice on our little-used Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Other-Side-of-Town/296181788864

where it appeared automatically as a result of hitting the comment button on the Press Herald web site.

Which proves our point about it being taken down.  TWICE.

Thanks, Congresswoman Pingree, and your benefactor, for your support of free press principles.

Maybe Counselor Boochever will write them a letter of protest for removing our comment.

Technorati Tags: Pingree papers,comments removed

Memo to Gina: Ostrich Opinion Objection

                                      

We’ve written in the past about ‘journalist’ Gina Hamilton, generally because of something she wrote in The Coastal Journal, which she headed some years ago.  You can read what we said here: http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/search?q=gina+hamilton

We just reread those items to remind ourselves what moved us to comment on her, and frankly, we’re impressed with how restrained we were in our comments.  She deserved far more in the way of a wire brushing if you think about her role at the CJ in those years.  No matter, it appears she got her just desserts.  Apropos that, one of the past items included this gem:

Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
                                                        -Oscar Wilde

Gina, by her own accounting, has had a varied career, including these two positions:

• adjunct physics and chemistry teacher; University of New England; taught physics and chemistry lab courses and occasional lecture sections

• adjunct physics teacher; Bowdoin College; taught physics lab courses.

Given our recounting of her inability to deal with numerical facts with reasonable grasp, we can only say we’re more than astonished by the sloppy hiring practices of two local ‘institutions of higher learning,’ and in particular, an esteemed, very local, highly selective, small liberal arts college.

Al Diamon, a curmudgeonly media analyst if there ever was one, had this to say in July of last year about Gina and The Ostrich, where she now holds forth:

Bias? What bias? In early July, the Times Record, the afternoon daily in Brunswick, announced it had hired Gina Hamilton as a reporter covering Bath and Harpswell, as well as coordinating arts and entertainment news. Hamilton is the former editor of MaineToday Media’s weekly Coastal Journal, as well as the editor of the New Maine Times, a nonprofit website with a strong liberal bent. In addition, Hamilton writes a regular weekly opinion piece for both the Times Record and New Maine Times, which displays an obvious leaning to the left.

Nevertheless, Times Record managing editor Bob Mentzinger doesn’t have a problem with Hamilton’s dual roles, saying she’ll continue her column while adding reporting duties.

“There’s no overlap,” Mentzinger said. “She’s not opining on Bath and Harpswell .… There’s a pretty good firewall between what’s she’s opining about and what she’s reporting.”

Nor is Mentzinger concerned that readers will be confused by Hamilton’s shifting roles, saying they’ll have little trouble telling one from the other.

But will they?

To cite one possible conflict, New Maine Times has published several pieces critical of Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s plan to cut revenue sharing to municipalities such as Bath and Harpswell. While the Legislature reduced the size of those reductions, both towns will still feel some impact. Won’t readers wonder if Hamilton’s apparent opposition to those cuts in particular, and LePage in general, is somehow coloring her reporting? Isn’t there a danger this might reduce the newspaper’s credibility?

Hamilton says there’s no problem. “All of that stuff is economic analysis,” she said. “It’s not opinionated economic analysis. It just is what it is.”

Mentzinger may be comfortable with that explanation because he’s made the jump from journalism (city editor at the Kennebec Journal) to political advocacy (working on the 2012 U.S. Senate campaign of Democrat Cynthia Dill) back to journalism, seemingly without ethical qualms. Although I notice he doesn’t mention his gig with Dill on his LinkedIn page.

Probably an oversight.

We need to point out that Mentzinger was recently canned by The Ostrich. And that the Ostrich web page has a button for ‘Paul LePage,’ but not ‘Eliot Cutler’ or ‘Mike Michaud.’  So ‘coloring reporting’ and ‘credibility’ are lingua franca non-grata at the local rag.

                                 

Demonstrating their commitment to staffing excellence, whoever owns/manages the Ostrich quickly promoted Hamilton from her lowly beat reporter stature to opinion page editor, where she spearheads the attitude formation mission of the so-called newspaper.  Given Mentzinger’s departure, she likely thinks she’s in the running for the Managing Editor post.  If you haven’t already cancelled your subscription with them, that should do it.

                               

Carrying on for others, Gina continues the habit the old bird has of publishing editorials written by one who doesn’t even live in our perfect little community.

While she reminds un in many ways of former Opinion Editor Claire Bastien from the last century, at least Claire was a town resident.

           

Speaking of Gina’s opinery, this past Wednesday, April 9th, she ran an editorial entitled “The Train in Maine.”  We have a number of objections to what she wrote, not least of which is protecting wetlands over protecting established neighborhoods.  And a liberal dose of “it’s your own damn faults, you idiots.”

But rather than bore you with our usual diatribes, we have something different today.

Dennis Bailey, a consultant employed by the Brunswick West Neighborhood Coalition, wrote back quickly to Gina with a direct and well articulated challenge to her editorial.  He’s given us permission to run it verbatim here, and we are, with gratitude.

To the best of our knowledge as of this moment, Gina has not responded, nor run Dennis’ item as a commentary.  Lucky for you, there’s another way to get the Other Side of the issue.  Dennis makes it pretty clear which statements of hers he’s responding to, so his work stands well on its own.  (If you want to read her original item, you’ll have to find it elsewhere.)

Here is Dennis Bailey’s memo:

Hi Gina,

I’d like to talk to you sometime about your recent editorial “The Train in Maine.” There seems to be a lot of information and facts that are either being ignored or misunderstood.

Perhaps the most egregious line in the story is near the end where you write that the Brunswick West neighborhood "had every reason to expect train facilities in their backyards.” Really? How?

If you check the records, you’ll find that all tracks except the Mainline, one relatively short freight rail siding and one very short spur were removed from the “Marshaling Yard” more than 25 years ago. All buildings were removed in the same time frame. Many years prior to that, passenger rail service had been discontinued and freight rail had severely diminished.

Only 550 carloads were carried on the line in 1983 compared to 3,300 in 1982 (this is from a Times Record article 7/24/85). With these kinds of facts, what any neighbor could reasonably expect is that trains were going the same way as the Dodo bird.

On top of that, the area in question was zoned by the town as a Mixed Use 2 Zoning District. The town, through it’s political process, had determined that large, industrial buildings are inconsistent with the Brunswick West location, which had been earmarked for mostly residential housing. The largest building permitted in this zone is 20,000 square feet, but as you know the proposed MLF is three times that size.

I don’t know if you’ve ever bought property, but I have, and one of the first things I do is to check the zoning and see what is permitted in the area. This usually gives me a relative sense of security knowing what I can expect to be built around me.

So to say that the neighbors “had every reason to expect train facilities in their backyards” means that they should have known that passenger rail service would be revived after it had long been discontinued, that NNEPRA would be created, that it would claim pre-emption status so it would not have to comply with local zoning laws, and that a huge industrial facility would someday be built in their backyard to service trains that didn’t exist at the time.

I know most of the members of the Brunswick West Neighborhood Coalition, and I haven’t met anyone yet with clairvoyance this keen. To say they should have expected a noisy, smelly industrial facility the length of two football fields on abandoned property outside their bedroom windows is like telling someone who moves next door to a gas station they should have known that an oil refinery would be built there someday.

There are other points in your editorial that display the same faulty logic. You summarily dismiss other possible locations for the facility, probably based on the consultant who was hired by NNEPRA to examine alternatives.

You should know that NNEPRA entered into an agreement to acquire the Brunswick West property BEFORE it engaged the consultant to do the analysis (this is well documented), which throws serious doubt over the report’s objectivity. The alternative sites have yet to receive a truly independent analysis (one of the reasons why a full environmental impact study is needed).

Also, your editorial suggests that the expansion and success of passenger rail service to and from Brunswick is somehow dependent on the construction of the MLF. Really? You should perhaps talk to people who work for AMTRAK (not NNEPRA). I have, current and former employees.

Many of them believe that Brunswick is the worst location for a facility of this type, for a variety of reasons that you may find interesting. It was originally planned for Portland but was moved to Brunswick for reasons we believe were mostly political. Seems odd that a facility that promises all the jobs and economic advantages that you claim would be unwanted in Maine's largest city.

What’s more, the success of passenger rail service is, or should be, dependent on ridership. Like any business, expansion should occur when demand warrants it. Have you looked at the actual ridership figures for the Brunswick line? Not the PR fluff that NNEPRA puts out but the actual daily and monthly ridership figures? We have, although it took a FOI request to get them.

What they show is that 90% of the time the train to and from Brunswick is below 10% capacity. 90% OF THE TIME. In other words, a train that can hold up to 300 passengers barely contains 30 on most days. Some days it’s even less. Some runs it’s none at all.

So explain to me: how will building a huge layover and maintenance facility for $12-$15 million in (mostly) federal funds to service these (mostly empty) trains expand the use of passenger rail service? How in the world will more people be convinced to utilize passenger rail service that they are not now using just because there is a gigantic layover facility nearby?

What’s the connection? I’m sorry, I don’t see one. And shouldn’t the justification for expanding passenger rail service and adding routes come AFTER the trains are unable to serve their current passengers? It certainly would in the private sector, but obviously a highly subsidized enterprise like AMTRAK operates under different rules.

Look, everyone loves trains. Who doesn’t? Even the members of BWNC love trains. They’ve got no beef with trains going by their house a few times per day. None at all. But having watched this issue unravel over the last year and seen the many serious and very legitimate concerns (for the community and the state, not just for the neighborhood) that have been raised and mostly ignored but the press, I’ve come to the conclusion that the news media have blinders on when it comes to passenger trains.

The usual skeptical scrutiny that the press gives most businesses is not applied to passenger rail and NNEPRA. Maybe reporters are just afraid of the facts, like they’ll be accused of killing Santa Claus. But I’ve known you to be an engaged and independent journalist, and I implore you to look beyond the spin that is being offered by NNEPRA and its advocates, and examine the real data and hard facts around this issue.

I’m happy to discuss this further at your convenience.

To which we say Bravo Zulu.  Which is probably why Ms Ostrich Opinion hasn’t bothered to respond.

If and when she does, we’ll let you know, but we wouldn't bet a Kuppa Kool-Aid on it.

Technorati Tags: Ostrich,Hamilton,Editorials

Incalculable: Ways to Screw-up Public Mega-Projects and Mini-Projects

  

You may have seen the recent article in The Forecaster referring to the “hefty price” of the new Brunswick Town Hall, or as we call it, The McLellan.  The article can be found here.  It centers around this uplifting passage:

….the new municipal building also comes at a cost, and one far greater than  anticipated when the town acquired the former McLellan Building from Bowdoin in 2011.

With renovation of the building nearly complete, the project is now expected to cost approximately $1.23 million, more than 12 times the $100,000 estimate when the building was acquired.

A quick read of the article shows that the number is very likely to climb higher, given the need for additional exterior work of indefinite scope, and a final accounting of total budget impact.  Which leaves us truly encouraged for the emerging budget season. 

We’re steeling ourselves for at least a 10% property tax increase this year, given the municipal and school department warning shots fired so far.  And at least as much in each of the next several years, given plans for two new schools, a central  fire station, and that critical town need – an “Aquatic Center.”  How did we ever survive without one?

You might also ponder the mention of PDT Architects, our favorite school design and engineering firm, in the history of transforming The McLellan, and how blameless they are, as is everyone else involved in the evolution.

                                                     

Councilor Dave Watson, a member of the renovation committee, is apparently unperturbed by the cost growth.  No stranger to grandiose pronouncements, he offered up this carefully crafted observation:

…the new Town Hall will "provide incredible and incalculable benefits to the citizens of Brunswick."

No hyperbole there!  From our vantage point, which is that of a taxpayer, the words ‘incredible’ and ‘incalculable’ are insanely appropriate, but not at all in the sense Watson probably meant them.  While we haven’t been able to confirm this, we’ve heard he said Congress mandated we spend this much and more on the building, ‘because it’s close to the Maine Street railroad crossing.’

               

At any rate, after mulling over this civic snafu, Shirley, Chance, and your correspondent were just hanging, and Chance led us to a several year old article on cost overruns for public projects.  You’ll find it at this link:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/011/973syeao.asp?page=1

The title and subtitle read thus:

The Next Big Dig?

There's a reason big public projects almost always overshoot their budgets.

We invite your attention to and reading of the article; it won’t take you more than five minutes or so.  And don’t let the word ‘big’ deter you, because as you’ll quickly see, the tricks, the pathologies, and the general mischief described apply equally well to very small public projects (say a building renovation, like The McLellan) and even slightly larger ones like the MLF planned by NNEPRA, which with the help of worthy consultants, has grown from $4 million to $12 million and when actually paid for, is likely to be closer to $20 million than to twelve.

Among the pithiest statements in the article are these:

HISTORY SUGGESTS that these estimates are a deception designed to gain early support for a project that will turn out to be much more expensive.

Boston's notorious Big Dig, which put some of Interstate 93 beneath the city, took 20 years to complete and cost about $14.6 billion, the most expensive road project in U.S. history. The original estimate: $2.6 billion. A money sinkhole, the project ruined careers, sprung intractable leaks, and has now roused federal prosecutors.

Time and again promoters of big public projects use low-ball estimates to seduce a gullible public into supporting a project. How does this happen? An important study has concluded that the best explanation is "strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying."  (emphasis ours)

Wouldn’t you just know it…an enterprising and intellectually curious academic from Denmark decided to study, analyze, and characterize the phenomenon.  He has a decidedly odd name, but don’t let that throw you.

BENT FLYVBJERG is a professor of development and planning at Aalborg University in Denmark, and is founder and director of the university's research program on transportation infrastructure planning. He has twice been a visiting Fulbright Scholar. He and his colleagues studied 258 transportation projects from different eras and different regions. Among the questions they hoped to answer: How common and how large are differences between forecasted and actual costs? Are the differences random or is there a pattern to the differences that indicates other explanations?

The study looked at several possible explanations for cost overruns. The first were technical reasons, and includes mistakes made due to inadequate data, honest errors, and inexperienced forecasters. But if technical reasons were the main cause for the disparities "we would expect a less biased distribution of errors in cost estimates." Significantly, forecasts are heavily biased toward underestimating the final costs. And there has been little or no improvement in forecasting as the decades pass. Gross underestimation today "is of the same order of magnitude as it was 10, 30, and 70 years ago"--which suggests that technical errors are not a significant cause of poor initial estimates.

Psychological reasons were also examined. Flyvbjerg writes, "Politicians may have a 'monument complex,' engineers like to build things, and local transportation officials sometimes have the mentality of empire builders." "But given the fact that the human psyche is distinguished by a significant ability to learn from experience," Flyvbjerg notes, "it seems unlikely that promoters and forecasters would continue to make the same mistakes decade after decade instead of learning from their actions."

In case you were falling asleep as you read, let us wake you up by emphasizing these words:

"Politicians may have a 'monument complex,' engineers like to build things, and local transportation officials sometimes have the mentality of empire builders."

              

                 

Anything taking place in Brunswick and environs come to mind, readers?

A more credible explanation for the disparities between forecasted and actual costs are economic motives, both public and private.

TRANSIT PROJECTS compete for funding from the federal government. A low forecast makes a project more attractive and less likely to be overlooked in favor of another city's project. Leonard Merewitz of the University of California-Berkeley, has concluded that "keeping costs low is more important than estimating costs correctly."  (emphasis again is ours.)

You hardly need to be a PhD at Berkeley to conclude that, Lenny.  We read it the other day in a book by Captain Obvious.

And on a private level, promoters and investors may benefit by shading forecasts so the projects will more likely be built. Flyvbjerg says, "Having costs underestimated and benefits overestimated would be economically rational for such stakeholders because it could increase the likelihood of revenues and profits."

Is lying too strong a word? Not according to Martin Wachs, director of the Institute for Transportation planning at the University of California-Berkeley, who in a study in the Business and Professional Ethics Journal showed that "officials on a variety of transportation projects lied to ensure that the projects get built," according to a summary in the Boston Globe. Dozens of officials on a number of projects admitted to lying. "They owned up to the fact that these practices were common," Wachs told the Globe's Raphael Lewis. "But they all said they were common among other companies."

FLYVBJERG CONCLUDES that costs are underestimated in 90 percent of transportation infrastructure projects. For tunnels and bridges, actual costs are on average 34 percent higher than forecast costs, and for road projects the disparity on average is 20 percent.  "We conclude that the cost estimates . . . are highly, systematically and significantly deceptive."

The punch line in all of this, which should be turned into a tapestry to be displayed in our new town council ‘chambers,’ is this:

And what do these deceptive numbers mean? "[T]hose . . . who value honest numbers should not trust the cost estimates presented by infrastructure promoters and forecasters," Flyvbjerg says. "[S]eemingly rational forecasts that underestimate costs and overestimate benefits have long been an established formula for project approval."

In our considered opinion, these symptoms and behaviors are independent of project scale.  As proof, we recall a recent ‘infrastructure project’ here in town where the beginning estimate was, oh, something like $100,000.

Monuments? 

How about monumental incompetence, disdain for due diligence, and refusal to learn from the blatant mis-management right in front of our collective lying eyes?  Shirley is familiar with a very recent instance locally, where the town council followed the lead of a self-styled ‘authority’ on environmental regulation to take a stand against due diligence.

                                     

As we’ve suggested, other factors could be at play.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, Jerry.  Or Dave.  Or Suzan.  Or Johnny.

Technorati Tags: Public projects,The McLellan,MLF,Amtrak,Brunswick,monuments

PS: on the slim chance that you’re feeling kind of geeky about reading up more on the subject, you can while away your afternoon pursuing these links.  As for us, we’re going to watch the Masters, if you don’t mind.  Something about hitting the ball until it goes in the hole, and then seeing who took the fewest hits to do it, feels right at the moment.  No estimates, no increases, no promises, and no monuments.

http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/cost-overruns-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-hate-bent-flyvbjerg/

http://vbn.aau.dk/files/14076659/Comparison_of_Capital_Costs.pdf

Rethinking the House of Sartoris Ambitions Post

               

On Thursday, April 10, we posted an item we titled  “House of Sartoris Ambitions Trump Brunswick West Quality of Life Concerns.”  It raised the issue of “political motivations” in Monday night’s town council vote declining to send a letter to the FRA requesting a full EIS on the Amtrak MLF project.

The post featured this passage:

Sitting town councilor Steve Walker, representing the House of Sartoris, wrote from a posture of high dudgeon in December of last year just before his swearing in.

He did so in what seems for all the world like a politically motivated Ostrich commentary titled “Brunswick council may have to sue itself.” 

Back to the commentary, in which Walker refers to ‘this raw exercise in political power,’ and says ‘Keeping overt politics off the board serves Brunswick best….’  He lauds the concepts of ‘an impartial hearing’ and proper process.

Considering the foregoing, we find councilor Sartoris’ Walker’s performance at Monday night’s council meeting to deal with the MLF EIS letter all the more inexplicable.  You can view his at bat below, and  you’ll note that given all the foul balls during his 6 minutes in the box, Chair Pols nearly had to signal the bull-pen to send in relief.

Unless you consider the possibility of political motivations behind the scenes that are anti-Tucker.  While we would never suggest such a thing, those more politically astute might note that Johnny Protocols (GoJo) is also on the council, and he is in high dudgeon himself over the actions of the Brunswick West Neighborhood Coalition and the support they’ve garnered.

Those same astute observers might even suggest that JP the first might have significant influence in helping JP the second defeat The House of Tucker in the upcoming primary, and that JP the first could use that for leverage in getting councilor Sartoris Walker to change his vote to GoJo’s side in the debate.  We’re not sure how many noms de Side we can keep track of for any one subject, but we’re looking into adding Jongali to JP’s aka list.

Our thinking was to consider the possibility that Walker’s arm was twisted to vote nay in return for the assistance of councilor Johnny Protocols (JP1) in securing a primary win for the Matriarch of The House of Sartoris. Recall one of our readers suggested naming her Jacquie P (for piranha) some time ago, or JP2.

                

(See note below) 

Since we wrote our subject column, we’ve learned that JP2 was busy posting away as the Monday night meeting unfolded, publicly explaining the HOS vote before the meeting was over (we assume the post she refers to is ours - Random Thoughts on Tonight’s Council Meeting):

Jackie Sartoris: “This was a very, very tough vote, R___. This is a highly technical area of law, and I guess I'd hesitate to be so harsh given that. The blog post completely fails to understand anything about the NEPA process, applying a layperson's understanding, which is not remotely the way these projects are developed or reviewed. Virtually every single word in NEPA has been litigated and interpreted through case law - you can't just read the flow chart and have any understanding of what NEPA requires, or what it actually protects. It is an approval process, not a denial process. After reviewing every single piece of paper associated with this project, again, and with his very experienced background, Steve was very sure that an EIS is not going to result in a different location. Moreover, every District 2 constituent who contacted Steve - over 30 - were against the letter (although I confess that I was not one of them - on the fence, mostly because I know how little a letter would matter, honestly, and how much criticism Steve would be under). We have both worked on EIS's, and are familiar with how NEPA is so often misunderstood by very compelling and rightfully upset neighborhoods, but it simply does not do what a superficial reading of the statute suggests. Please contact Steve if you want a thorough understanding of this issue, but I can tell you that at no time has he taken this lightly.”

After reading the Matriarch’s words, we began to rethink the possibilities.  JP1, as you well know, spent years in Augusta ensuring that members of his party caucus voted as he wanted, and we trust, has mastered numerous techniques of ‘enhanced persuasion.’  We know from personal experience that third parties are sometimes involved to confuse things a bit.  What if the “friendly” arm twisting, instead of being applied to a fellow councilor, was applied to the hopeful candidate, and she then grabbed the tiller of her live-in councilor’s boat to set it on a different course than he had appeared to be sailing?

                     

We’ll leave that for the interested student of local politics to ponder, and shift our interest to these words in her missive:

After reviewing every single piece of paper associated with this project, again, and with his very experienced background, Steve was very sure that an EIS is not going to result in a different location.

As we’ve already related, we know of no means by which Walker obtained the collected comments submitted against the EA from the originating parties.  But that’s a small point if you consider that calling for an EIS resets the whole process.  Scoping sessions are convened, stakeholders are identified, and a thorough examination begins anew. 

Being “very sure that an EIS is not going to result in a different location” stretches credulity beyond the pale, including his standing to make such a summary determination on behalf of the entire council and town residents.  He may be ‘an’ authority in such matters, but he is not ‘the’ authority.

The EA was conducted by NNEPRA, an obviously biased stakeholder in the project, since they had already purchased the Brunswick West property.  They had the help of their paid consultant, known for their work on the Big Dig (http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/2014/02/brunswicks-very-own-big-dig.html.

An EIS, in contrast, is a professionally refereed, objective scientific process, conducted by an independent third party, which in this case would be the Federal Railroad Authority.  There is no guarantee of outcome, though it’s certainly possible that the result would be to confirm the Brunswick West location.  Whatever conclusion is reached, it would be substantially more rigorous than the EA, and total project costs and impact mitigation would be thoroughly vetted.

If Walker could foresee such an outcome, why would he not endorse an EIS to make the selection even more ‘certain,’ with more robust and thorough consequences identified and mitigation steps called for?  Thereby removing all doubt?  Isn’t that what environmentalists usually stand for?

If not, why not?  And while we’re at it, since both the Patriarch and the Matriarch of HOS have ‘both worked on EIS’s,’ perhaps they could list a few and cite their specific areas of involvement in those efforts.

JP2’s blovitation about “a highly technical area of law” and the words following are typical distractions from the issue that was before the council. That was sending a letter, which as Chair Pols pointed out, was simply ‘asking.’  The town had already paid for an attorney’s opinion that doing so was entirely acceptable practice, and could have an effect on FRA deliberations.

                              

For now though, we’ll continue to believe that something else was afoot here.  And it all comes down to these two ‘players,’ affectionately known to our readers as JP1 and JP2.

                                       

We’re pretty clear on what JP2 wants, but we’ll be damned if we can figure out what JP1’s interests in this caper are.  Sure, he’s used to getting the results he wanted from the underlings arrayed before him, and in making sure he gets the maximum exposure and credit for the final outcome.  Just like he did on Monday night, when he staged things so he’d be the deciding ‘speaker.’

Nice move, under the circumstances.  But what the hell is so important to GoJo that he MUST have the MLF built in Brunswick, and that it MUST be built at Brunswick West?  What does he have to gain by seeing that the project moves forward as is with no further risk or challenge?  Beyond pure ego considerations, that is.

What happens when the twister becomes the twisted?  Is it remotely possible that someone else, as yet unrevealed, is twisting his arm to get a prize they want?  Who could that be, and what prize are they after? 

                                

Or is it simply that Johnny’s trying to live out his lost Governorship fantasy by opposing the sitting Governor’s position?  And playing Governor of the State of Brunswick?  Or Speaker of The Council House?

Once again, we’re sending out an APB for The Shadow.  Maybe one of these days we’ll actually make contact.

(Ed note: Sartoris told us long ago in an email that “honesty is not always the best policy” while she was on the town council.) 

Technorati Tags: JP1,JP2,House of Sartoris,EIS,MLF,town council

Bailey Bids Buh-bye to Barrister Business

An article yesterday in Portland’s largest newspaper reported the following:

F. Lee Bailey, the famed defense attorney who sought to make a comeback in Maine after being disbarred more than a decade ago, lost his bid to practice law on a split decision Thursday by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

                               

Bailey was denied the right to practice law in Maine in a 4-2 decision by Maine’s highest court. The ruling Thursday overturned a previous decision by a single justice who found that Bailey was fit to practice law because he was sufficiently rehabilitated after mishandling a client’s stocks worth $6 million.

The court denied Bailey in a 4-2 decision, saying the lawyer who helped to win acquittals for celebrity defendants O.J. Simpson and Dr. Sam Sheppard had “failed to demonstrate that he is sufficiently rehabilitated by proving that it is highly probable that he recognizes the wrongfulness and seriousness of most of the misconduct he committed.”

FLee, as we’ve called him in posts in the past, may be best remembered as a confidant and advisor to our own Johnny Protocols, especially during his failed gubernatorial campaign effort of 2010.

                 

The pair is shown above during that time frame, taking up space as non-paying customers in Wild Oats at the Tontine Mall.

It occurs to us that FLee should have consulted with JP on the path to rehabilitation and redemption in the public eye.  If he had, we might be reading about Bailey’s election to the Yarmouth town council, a group he could no doubt nullify at will.

                               

Or his non-judgmental embrace of international statesmen.

Bailey, of course, distinguished himself several in the case of Oxford Aviation’s attempt to hornswoggle a huge hangar on the former Naval Base.  Words we posted back then include these:

Bailey uses soaring flights of hyperbole, enchanting all within earshot without the slightest bit of evidence, analysis, or substantiation. Try these: “a tremendous opportunity for Brunswick, far beyond anything I had imagined;” and “further cement Brunswick as a global leader in the aviation world.”

Bailey touts “contracts with aviation industry titans,” and avows that Oxford is “in discussions with Airbus.” His speechifying is all we have to go on. I suppose we should be grateful, though; this is too good a deal to pass up, right? (If you were an Airbus executive, would you take Oxford Aviation seriously?)

Jim Horowitz, the owner of Oxford Aviation, has kept out of the public eye, except to plead for more respect for his employees, a frivolous distraction from the troubling facts on the record.

And this:

…which could morph Oxford Aviation’s towering world-wide reputation for skill and quality in aircraft refurbishing into similar results with business jets, for which there is a large and growing market.

You remember Oxford Aviation, don’t you?  Trust us, you’re better off if you don’t.  Especially since Kestrel Aviation swept in to “further cement Brunswick” as an also ran in the aviation world.

In the process, though, FLee taught JP the finer points of public hyperbole, which is why councilor Protocols could say at the recent council meeting that he lives ‘within a stone’s throw’ of the railroad tracks.

By our reckoning on Google Earth, that means Johnny P can hurl a stone something like 6,000 feet or more, which for the non-technical, is in excess of one mile, or about 50 times further than Bouchard Drive residents live from the tracks.

Maybe he should enter the David and Goliath games this summer.

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